حبوب منع النفاق

يعود المسلسل المصري أرض النفاق إلى العام ١٩٧٥ وهو متوافر على اليوتوب لمن لديه نوستالجيا لكوميديا القرن الماضي. أبطالُهُ مجموعةٌ من النجوم بينهم فؤاد المهندس، صفيّة العمري، نبيلة السيّد، ونظيم شعراوي. لعب هذا الأخير دور وكيل الوزارة الفاسد أحمد بيه الجمّال والقصة بالمختصر المفيد أنّ الدكتور باهر (حسن عابدين) اخترع "حبوب منع النفاق" التي بمجرّد أن يتناولها المنافق يصبح صادقاً و صريحاً إلى درجة الوقاحة كما حصل لنادل المقهى الذليل حليشة (فاروق علي) الذي تحول من مداهنة الزبائن بأخسّ العبارات إلى قولِ رأيه الحقيقي فيهم لا بل وإهانتهم. جرّب فؤاد المهندس (الأديب حامد عبد السلام) حبوب الدكتور باهر على أكثر من شخص ولم تكن النتائج دائماً إيجابيّة وكما قال رئيس وزراء إنجلترا السابق ونستون تشرشل: "تحتاج الحقيقة إلى جيشٍ من الأكاذيب لحمايتها".  

النفاق مجبولٌ في طبيعة البشر وهناك حالة خاصّة منه متفشّية على طول وعرض الوطن العربي المزعوم مفادُها تملّق الحاكم وعبادة الفرد. من البدهي أنّ هذه الظاهرة قديمةٌ للغاية منذ أيام النابغة الذبياني وعلي بن الجهم، إن لم نقل منذ أيام الإله-الملك فرعون. لا تزال هذه العادة حيّةً في أوج عنفوانها في مطلع القرن الحادي و العشرين وإن تغيّر أسلوب الأداء مع ارتقاء التقنيّة: قديماً كان اختصاص المداهنة حكراً على الكّتاب والشعراء أمّا اليوم فلدينا أيضاً المغنّين والملحّنين والفرق الموسيقيّة ناهيك عن الصحف والإذاعة والتلفزيون والأقمار الصناعيّة والشبكة العنكبوتيّة. علاوة على كلِّ ذلك زاد عدد الناس كثيراً و أصبح إنزال حشودٍ غفيرة إلى الشوارع وتسجيل مسيراتها وهتافاتها "العفويّة" بالصوت والصورة في حيّز الإمكان.

هذا لا يعني بالضرورة أنّ كل من نَظَمَ شعراً وكلّ من غنىّ لحاكمٍ منافقٌ ومنتفعٌ. على سبيل المثال كان شاعر دمشق العظيم نزار قبّاني ناصريّاً على حياة عبد الناصر و أصبح أكثر ناصريّةً بعد موت هذا الأخير، بيد أنّ أمثال نزار قليلون. بالمقابل ما أكثر نموذج أصالة نصري التي غنّت "حماك الله يا أسدُ فداك الروحُ و الجسدُ" قبل أن ينزل عليها الوحي وتباشر بتمسيح الجوخ لملك البحرين على مبدأ "من تزوّج أمّي فهو عمّي". أصالة بالطبع غيضٌ من فيض ويبقى مطرب وملحّن مصر العملاق محمّد عبد الوهّاب من أكبر المداهنين في تاريخ الشرق الأدنى ولعشرات السنوات، إن لم يكن أكبرهم على الإطلاق.

أُطْلِقَ على عبد الوهّاب في النصف الأول من القرن العشرين لقب "مطرب الملوك" ولم يكن في هذا أي مبالغة كونه غنّى لملك العراق فيصل الأوّل، وعاهل مصر فاروق، وباني السعوديّة عبد العزيز قبل أن "يهتدي" ويشدو لعبد الناصر والثورة إلى أن أصبح ساداتيّاً ونال رتبة جنرال مكافأةً على تزلّفِهِ. 

مع ذلك يبقى عبد الوهاب مبدعاً حتى عندما يمارس النفاق الرخيص كما فعل في أغنية "أنشودة الفنّ" الجميلة التي غنتها أيضاً ليلى مراد بصوتها العذب. هكذا خاطبَ عبد الوهّاب الملك فاروق:

الفنّ مين يوصفه إلّا اللّى عاش فى حماه

والفنّ مين يعرفه إلّا اللّى هام فى سماه

والفنّ مين أنصفه غير كلمة من مولاه

والفنّ مين شرّفه غير الفاروق ورعاه

إنت اللّى أكرمت الفنّان ورعيت فنّه

ردّيت له عزّه بعد ما كان محروم منّه

ورويت فؤاده بالألحان برضاك عنّه

ما أحوج العالم بأسْرِهِ إلى الدكتور باهر وحامد عبد السلام وحبوب منع النفاق. 

On Islamic Tolerance

Bilāl the Abyssinian was a Companion of Prophet Muḥammad and Islam's first muezzin. His tomb—if we are to believe popular tradition—is located at Bāb aṣ-Ṣaġīr's ancient cemetery in Damascus, the alleged resting place of several holy men and women, including the first Umayyād Caliph Muʿāwīyā; Um Ḥabībā, daughter of Abu Sufīān and one of Muḥammad's numerous wives; Fāṭimā, the daughter of Imam Ḥusayn; etc. There exists, needless to say, no shortage of ancient mausoleums in and around Damascus; heck, I personally paid a visit to what passes for Abel's tomb many years ago.

Whether or not those graveyards host the remains they claim to, whether or not those men or women ever set foot in Damascus, and if they existed at all, is not the subject of this post. Various Muslim countries may dispute the honor of possessing the relics of this or that saint; the Wahhābis may reject necropolis wholesale and frown at tomb visitation; but the aura surrounding those people, their lives, and their achievements is seldom debated. Their biographies have meticulously been collected, “authenticated,” commented, and adopted by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide from time immemorial.

Bilāl was one of Islam's first martyrs (so were ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir and his ilk, but that's another story). Every Muslim knows how he eagerly adopted the Mohammedan faith when the believers were a tiny minority and how much he suffered for it. Bilāl was a slave of the cruel ʾUmayyā ibn H̱alaf, who was, along with Abu Ǧahl and Abu Lahab, one of Islam's deadliest enemies and a member of a powerful Qurayšite clan. The ruthless ʾUmayyā was hellbent on reclaiming his renegade slave to the old pagan faith, and towards that purpose, he'd put steadfast Bilāl to all kinds of torture, such as having the martyr lie down on burning desert sand with a heavy stone placed on his chest as to bring him to the verge of suffocation. Bilāl adamantly refused to renounce the one-and-only true faith, of course, and somehow survived the greatest ordeal of his life to the great relief of the Community of the Faithful. He went on to become Islam's first muezzin, and his beautiful voice is the stuff of legends.

The Forces of Darkness met their first defeat at the hands of the Muslims in the Battle of Badr. It was a day of reckoning for ʾUmayyā ibn H̱alaf, who was captured by ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, a companion of the Prophet Muḥammad and one of the ten to whom Paradise was promised. Bilāl sighted his old nemesis "the enemy of Allah" in shackles, helpless and defeated, and lost no time slaying him despite the vociferous protestations of ibn ʿAwf, who had pledged to spare ʾUmayyā's life.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Bilāl and ʾUmayyā are indeed historical figures and that the above narrative is truthful—for the sake of this post, the veracity of the above narrative or the lack thereof is irrelevant since Muslims treat it as bona fide history of which they are proud—I find this anecdote particularly illuminating. The savage ʾUmayyā may have tortured Bilāl, but HE DID NOT KILL HIM when he could have easily done it with precisely zero accountability. On the contrary, it was Bilāl who needlessly butchered a captured ʾUmayyā who was no longer capable of hurting him or anyone; worse, he committed the deed despite the fact that his erstwhile tormentor was under the protection of another companion of the Prophet, just like himself.

To the Muslims, the martyr was Bilāl the executioner, not the victim he slew! This is almost as comical as the "martyrdom" of Basil al-ʾAsad, though in the latter case it was not about good versus evil, merely a tragic car accident transformed by obsequious media into an occasion to shed crocodile tears in order to curry favor with the ruler, just as their ancestors did under the French and before that the Ottomans.

Bilāl's was by no means a unique example. An even more egregious insult to common sense was the treatment the Muslims inflicted on the Jews of Medina, exiled, murdered, or enslaved to the last man and woman and yet perversely accused of “plotting” against the Muslim community in cahoots with “pagan” Qurayš. Even were this to be true, that is, that some of them did indeed conspire against Muḥammad, would that justify such a brutal and collective punishment? (Saʿd ibn Muʿāḏ notoriously advised Muhammad to kill Banū Qurayẓā's men and enslave the women and the children, and the Prophet concurred). Once again, one can't but marvel at the ease with which credulous Muslims have always accepted at face value that the Jews of Medina were the villains of the story and amply deserved their grim fate and much more.

There exists no shortage of such tales throughout history, of course, and they're by no means restricted to Christianity or Islam. There is one major difference, however: Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, and European powers may commit atrocities on a large—sometimes genocidal—scale, but criticizing them and denouncing their crimes is perfectly permissible. This is true particularly for events that are ancient history (many choose to refrain from condemning powerful nations or leaders who could silence and kill their opponents). It is legitimate to point to the massacres committed by, say, Alexander the Great in Tyre; exposing Genghis Khan for the mass murderer he was is perfectly alright; Hitler remains the ultimate impersonation of pure evil for many. 

Highlighting misdeeds of prophets and their companions, objectively pointing to the crimes committed by organized religion, and subjecting pious criminals to the same scrutiny one does secular leaders are an altogether different story. Do that at your own risk and blame no one but yourself for the consequences.

As George Orwell would say, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. At least as far as monotheism and its bogus martyrs go. 

On Christian Tolerance

Marcus Vinicius was a Roman patrician who fell in love with a beautiful Christian maiden named Ligia. Their romance is prominently featured in Henryk Sienkiewicz' historical novel Quo Vadis, subsequently adapted by Hollywood in 1951 in an epic movie.

Vinicius was young, dashing, handsome, and fabulously wealthy. He was also a pagan who knew next to nothing about the then-new Christian faith prior to meeting the love of his life. Ligia returned his affection but had to restrain her feelings until their union could be sanctioned by the Holy Church. The young lovers lived during the reign of Nero, the infamous Roman Caesar whose assistance was initially sought by Vinicius to help win Ligia's hand, and eventually her heart.

Vinicius spared no effort to woo Ligia. When he found out that she was Christian, he proposed to add Jesus to the gods of his household in order to please her; after all, what harm could result from one extra deity when there already existed so many who had somehow been getting along from time immemorial? The devout lass was horrified by this proposal, as would be expected given her fiercely monotheistic faith. Luckily for them, the conclusion of their passionate attachment was a happy one, and Vinicius ended up adopting the faith of his beloved but not before witnessing the genocidal massacre of her coreligionists by the monstrous Nero.

History is unkind to losers, and Nero was no exception. The bulk of what is known about him was transmitted by his enemies, from murdering his mother Agrippina all the way to “fiddling while Rome burns” then blaming the catastrophe on the Christians and sending them to be devoured by wild beasts in his circuses. While Nero most certainly was no saint—saints seldom if ever make successful emperors—he was very unlikely the ogre his biographers would have you think. As for the butchery to which he subjected the Christians, it is virtually certain that it was wildly exaggerated, if not altogether made up.

For Rome of the 1st century CE was unlikely to host significant numbers of Christians. Arguably the entire Roman Empire at the time had very few Christians, way too few to provide for a gory spectacle in the spacious Roman circuses for Rome's heathen spectators. In a nutshell, if Nero had heard about the Christian faith at all, he in all probability hardly gave it a thought. He had too many powerful foes to waste his time oppressing a harmless and obscure minority.

This is not to say that the Christians endured no persecution under the Romans. They suffered under Decius and Diocletian, but that was 200 years after Nero, by which time the new faith was firmly established and patiently anticipating its triumph with the Edict of Milan under Constantine the Great. Paganism was to make a final desperate reaction under Julian the Apostate in the second half of the fourth century CE, but that was essentially it. The old gods had to yield to Christ as pagans joined the new faith en masse, preferably of their own free will or—if necessary—by brutal force. Jupiter's temples were transformed into churches and cathedrals or demolished wholesale; old gods morphed into Christian saints; and Vestal Virgins became nuns. It is well established that by the time of Theodosius the Great, it was the turn of Paganism to be persecuted by the turn-the-other-cheek Christians! So thoroughly did the Christians hound the adherents of the old faith that they'd soon run out of them and turn their weapons against each other in a long and forlorn struggle to define orthodoxy and identify what each sect considered to be the authentic form of Christianity.

Back to Ligia and Vinicius. The young man was more than willing to accommodate Jesus in his pantheon, but the lovely young woman was too pure and too jealous of her God to tolerate any other deity, however much she loved her suitor. It does not take too much imagination to extend the comparison to polytheism versus monotheism, the first by definition far more tolerant than the second no matter what the followers of the latter proclaim.

And yet it's all about the suffering of the monotheists. No one cares for or talks about martyrs for Paganism. It is taken for granted that polytheism is bad and monotheism is good; the latter is logical and the former is not; faith in the old gods equals superstition, whereas faith in one God is somehow scientific. To add insult to injury is the presumptuous claim of the victimizer that he was tormented and persecuted by none other than his victim.

If indeed the early Christian communities were oppressed by ruthless heathens from Nero to Julian (spanning 300 years), wouldn't one expect the Christians to be exterminated rather than the other way round? Did Christianity employ purely peaceful means in its relentless conquest of the world? How exactly did Charlemagne convert the Saxons? The Europeans preached Jesus to the Native Americans and Africans? And let's not go into the Crusades.

A victor needs not apologize for his triumph; legions of scholars would happily justify his most unjustifiable excesses. Volumes would be written to whitewash every crime, rationalize every absurdity, make sense out of utter nonsense, smear each and every opponent, and brainwash one generation after another into docile obedience.

Some may proudly point out how tolerant modern “Christian” Europe and America are, but this is false: the West is tolerant because it is secular, because of its separation of church and state. The Christian West was never tolerant, not only of Jews and Muslims but also of “different” Christians. In Spain it was the Inquisition, in France the massacre of the Huguenots, in Britain the persecution of the Catholics and the Puritans, etc....

The notion of a “tolerant monotheistic faith” is an oxymoron.

From the Umayyad to the Alawites, on the History of Sectarianism in Syria

The advent of the internet opened a virtually limitless access to information for anyone who could read; the explosion of social media opened a worldwide forum to exchange thoughts, ideas, and data in the form of user-friendly links that magically pop up with a mere click, the way Aladdin used to summon his genie by rubbing his legendary lamp. Anyone could quote anybody and provide an immediately available reference to support his or her point of view.
More often than not, those links are misleading if not outright mendacious, and it takes a healthy dose of knowledge and skepticism to guard against abusing rather than using information technology. Wikipedia is nowadays one of the most cited—perhaps the most cited—references, and yet it is full of falsehoods and tendentious articles, at least when it comes to history and politics.

The year was about 2011 or 2012 when I had an online exchange with an anonymous English-speaking Internet user (most likely an American) regarding the composition of the Syrian Army. He posted an assertion that the majority of the men making up the Syrian Armed Forces belonged to the Alawite sect, and when I replied to the contrary, he promptly provided a link to Wikipedia corroborating his view, thus—in his mind at least—dealing me the proverbial coup de grâce. I was certainly not about to divulge my national origin to yet another know-it-all ignoramus, but I politely pointed out to him that what he was proposing was simply impossible: the Syrian Law prescribed mandatory universal military service for all men of all sects age 18 or older with few exemptions. Naturally, I provided a link to support my counterargument, but he deigned not to reply to my post or even acknowledge receiving it.

So much of this anecdote. Everyone who lives in Syria or has resided there long enough knows that the Syrian Army is made up of all Syrians, not just the Alawites, as many outsiders seem to think. That said, there is no question that the Alawites are overrepresented in the professional armed forces, and this is true for the officer corps, NCOs, and career soldiers in general. Certain key units are commanded by Alawites, and that has been the case for decades, no ifs, ands, or buts. Why is it so? Has there been a deliberate policy by the powers-that-be to construct a sectarian army? And if so, towards what purpose?

To understand the process by which the Alawites came to occupy such a position, one has to go back in time, all the way to the Ottomans, if not prior. For centuries, the Alawites were marginalized, impoverished, and discriminated against. They sought a safe haven in the mountain named after them, the way the Druze, Maronite, and Twelver Shiites have done in Greater Syria from time immemorial. So long as Syria belonged to one empire or another, the Alawites' ambitions were frustrated by the dictates of the imperial center, often located thousands of miles away; in this respect they shared the fate of all Syrians with the exception of those who identified or collaborated with the hegemon.

Syria gained its independence in 1946 and felt as such compelled to have its own national army, rather than depend on the “protection” of Paris or Constantinople. Joining the army was now open to all Syrians—Jews excepted, though I am not sure at what point this discrimination started—who wanted to embark on a military career, and there was, of course, the above-mentioned universal service. But who are usually the ones who choose such a career? This is a question that could be posed in any country, not just Syria.

Serving in the Syrian army is anything but a free ride. Military life is difficult for the vast majority of soldiers even in peaceful times. It is true that some may end up achieving wealth and glory, but this is the exception, not the rule. Many more lose life and limb, and the majority endure a Spartan existence. Conclusion: if you or your parents have the means, chances are you would not opt for a military career; this is true of everyone regardless of color or creed. Joining the army affords some a chance, a way out of a precarious life. The army is a vehicle of social mobility all over the planet. If the Alawites joined the Syrian Armed Forces in disproportionate numbers, it is because they'd been disproportionately poor, not because they harbored some ominous designs to dominate the country. An excellent study about the rise of the Baath Party and its relation to Syria's peasantry and minorities was done by the late Hanna Batatu. Patrick Seale's Asad is also an essential read for those interested in Syrian politics.

But is this phenomenon, that of minorities assuming leadership, a new one? Was it a product of the 20th century? Of decolonization? Let's take a free ride in a time machine to the Middle Ages, and let's start with the 7th century AD. Admittedly, this would be an arbitrary departure point for a country as ancient as Syria.

When the Arabs thundered out of their peninsula under the banner of Islam to evict the Byzantines out of Syria and North Africa and humble the Sassanian Empire beyond redemption—in what could arguably be described as the blitzkrieg of the Dark Ages—the Levant was still largely Christian in creed (with a multitude of denominations at each other's throats, to be sure) and Aramaic and/or Greek in speech. The triumphant Arabs were a minority in language as well as religion, and that was to be the case throughout the reign of the Umayyad. They even discouraged the conversion of the natives, preferring instead to maintain their privileges as an elite caste, taxing the “Dhimmis” to support a parasitic (excuse my language, but I prefer to call a spade a spade) Arab soldiery and its dependents. Tolerant of others faith they were, but this tolerance varied with the temperament of the ruler. Perhaps the most tolerant of them all was the founder, Muawiya, understandably so as the state was still young and vulnerable, whereas the least tolerant was the pious Umar ibn Abdul Aziz.

The Umayyad reign came to an end when—in a bloodbath—their White Banner succumbed to the Abbasid Black Banner. In reality it was a resurgence of the Persian Empire and a reassertion of age-old Iranian dominance in Mesopotamia. Syria was marginalized under the Abbasids as the empire's center of gravity shifted to the east. It is not my intention to narrate a page that does not properly belong to the history of Syria. Suffice it to say that the Abbasid Empire was dominated by Persians or Turks practically since its inception all the way to its collapse and ultimate destruction under the onslaught of the Mongol Hordes.

Syria subsequently fell under Tulunid, Hamdanid, Fatimid, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders.... It was to experience an Indian Summer under the Zengid and the Ayyubid. It is interesting to note that not only were those “minoritarian” rulers (for by then the Arabic-speaking people constituted a decisive majority) of a different ethnicity, but they also hardly spoke Arabic. They bore different, foreign-sounding names, as could easily be verified by paying a visit to some of the countless mosques and mausoleums they left throughout Syria. Saladin was not an Arab, no matter what the pseudo-history taught in Syria's schools tells us. The same goes for Nureddin, al-Adil, all the way to the fall of the Ayyubid in the middle of the 13th century.

From 1250 to 1516, Syria fell under the dominance of the Mameluke, yet another alien race with alien manners and a foreign tongue. Next came the Ottomans, who regularly appointed governors from all over their vast empire to Syria, then one of their fairest provinces.
It should by now be evident that Syria has been governed by one minority or another since at least the Muslim Arab invasion. Those pesky “sectarians,” however, eventually managed to blend in with the rest of the population, adopt its “native” Arabic tongue, and contribute to the country'’s rich heritage.

One cannot overemphasize the importance of those inconvenient yet straightforward facts: pretty much every single religious, ethnic, or linguistic group in Syria was—at one point or another—a sect or a minority. The same ignorant and derogatory stereotypes heaped indiscriminately against the Alawites today were in all likelihood used and abused against “Pagans,” Umayyad, Persians, Turks, Fatimid, Kurds, Jews, Samaritans, Christians (Monophysite, Nestorian, Greek Orthodox), Muslims (Sunni, Shiite, Ismaili, Druze), you name it.

Bigotry does not target individuals but rather whole groups. It is not about what you do but who you are. It goes without saying that no one should be immune to criticism, and any leader or politician should be fair game. President Obama is a case in point: serious criticism targets his domestic and foreign policy, while bigots choose to focus on irrelevant issues such as his faith (or the lack thereof), skin color, parents, and birthplace.

Virtù and Justice

A conflict of interests arises between A and B; A attacks B, they fight it out, and at the end, A carries the day. What conclusion(s) could be drawn out of this abstract?

One could reasonably conclude that A was stronger than B and therefore capable of defeating his opponent. Would it be fair to also infer that A's cause was the righteous one? Was A the Party of Good that prevailed over B, the Party of Evil? Not quite, for it is self-evident that being stronger, smarter, prettier, etc. would not in and of itself make you a moral person or transform your conduct into an ethical one. Sounds pretty straightforward, but is it?

The story of little David smiting colossal Goliath epitomizes the victory of right over wrong. The virtuous may suffer temporary setbacks, but at the end of the day, he has to win. Of course we may stretch this argument by stipulating that, even if one does not get his/her grievances redressed in this life, surely a day of reckoning would set everything straight in the afterlife. For this post, however, I would like to stick to what is tangible and suspend theological nuances and metaphysics.

The Book of Samuel reveals another aspect of King David, not as noble but an uninteresting one nonetheless. Uriah the Hittite was a soldier in David's army whose wife, Bathsheba, was coveted by the slayer of Goliath. To satisfy his lust, David had to arrange for the murder of the husband. The sordid affair is detailed in the Holy Bible for those interested in saucy tales. Setting aside all ethical arguments and counterarguments, my purpose of relating this story is merely to illustrate what I think is the truer nature of ANY successful ruler, something that was masterfully elaborated by Machiavelli in his famous political manual, “The Prince.” Irrespective of whether David, Goliath, Bathsheba, or Uriah were historical figures or—far more likely—fictional characters, the story retains its validity as to what makes a despot good or bad, or, for the purpose of simplification, a success versus a failure. David, a murderer and an adulterer, is a far more plausible template for a ruler than David, the dashing youth gallantly risking his life in what seemed like a hopeless battle won against overwhelming odds.

Powerful men or women are neither honest nor kindly. They may be bright, good-looking, charming, and charismatic... but decent they are not, and honesty is out of the question. They usually are opportunistic, ruthless, perfidious, mendacious, untrustworthy... The latter qualities are not necessarily bad in a ruler so long as they work to the advantage of his subjects, at least the largest possible number of them. My dad used to tell me an axiom he attributed to ʾAnṭūn Saʿādā—founder of the SSNP—that could be loosely translated as follows: “To an honest man, I'd give my daughter's hand in marriage, but entrusting him with my fate would be a different matter.”

Classical Rome had a better grasp of what's virtuous and what's not. For the word “virtue” originated from the Latin “virtutem,” meaning “manliness,” and begat the derivative “virile” that had a most positive connotation in the writings of Winston Churchill. The Romans did not fathom virtue the way we do. To our modern understanding it's about compassion, love, charity, sympathy, honesty, hard work, mercy, altruism, piety, chastity... for them it was about audacity, stoicism, power, might, victory... A Roman might wage war, destroy, kill, and enslave and still be virtuous, not despite his cruelty but as a consequence of it. All is allowed as long as you win, and once you do, you can conveniently pass the task of glorifying your exploits to poets and historians who would highlight your achievements and ignore or minimize the trail of death and desolation you left behind.

History, everywhere at any time, is a collection of lies and partial truths. Chroniclers might sample the Assyrian Annals that provided a useful adjunct to archeological studies and where Assyria's propagandists assiduously documented the exploits of its kings, exalting their prowess in warfare along with their gratuitous cruelty. Rome''s apologists followed the same path: glory to the victor and death or ignominy to the vanquished. Herodotus' analysis was more sophisticated, as he sought to seek cause—usually hubris—and effect—nemesis—to conflicts; he also cleverly magnified the achievements of the victorious Greeks by wildly exaggerating the numbers of the defeated Persians, a practice common to apologists from time immemorial. 

Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Suleiman the Magnificent, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Napoléon... their “greatness” consisted in conquering vast empires at a tremendous cost in human suffering and material destruction. Might is right.

The notion that justice would eventually prevail is a fiction. A just cause is at least as likely to lose as an unjust one, that is, unless we define “justice” and “virtue” in Roman terms. Victors—keenly conscious of their posthumous image—handsomely reward legions of pundits to meticulously highlight their good deeds and whitewash their crimes, however odious. With that in mind, it should be no wonder that a generation or two is all that it takes for people to forget the abominations that spearheaded the impeccable “greatness” of their heroes and delude themselves into subscribing to a Hollywood-style “good” that deservedly thwarted the ultimate “evil.”

La Perfide Albion

I grew up in an Arab Syria where passionate patriotic discourse was the norm and Arab nationalism often bordered on jingoism. Every national narrative has to have its heroes and villains. The latter could be native quislings or alien conspirators whose strings are pulled by some hostile power. Of heroes—real or imaginary—there certainly is no shortage, and the same goes for villains: the stronger those villains are, the better, as there is no glory fighting unworthy foes. This is self-evident: darkness is needed to better define the light, and every thesis needs an antithesis.

The super-villain I grew up with was the United States of America, sworn enemy of all “Progressives” worldwide and unconditionally supportive of a militaristic Israel, hell-bent on expansion to the detriment of its neighbors. The notorious Pentagon and CIA were plotting against the Arab World in general, and Syria in particular, day and night. Their nefarious designs aimed at nothing less than global hegemony, usurping Arabs’ national resources—oil first and foremost—and propping up “reactionary” Arab regimes and client states.

But the evil that my grandparents and great-grandparents were acquainted with was a different one. That malevolent superpower was—as my grandmother used to enviously repeat—the “empire on which the sun never sets.” It was mighty Great Britain, whose king or queen claimed the Indian Empire and ruled the Seven Seas. By contrast, we all know that England is now a has-been. To be sure, it still is prosperous and proud, but it no longer dominates Europe, let alone the world.

So a rising “Arab Nation” struggling to be born had to face the great power that was the United Kingdom. To an Arab nationalist of the first half of the twentieth century, the British committed two unforgivable sins: the first was to betray their promises to the Arab revolutionists, and the second was to issue the notorious Balfour Declaration pledging to facilitate the immigration of Jews to Palestine. Nothing the British would do could erase those twin crimes from Arab memory. Not even the White Paper of 1939 or the rapid decline of British influence after a ruinous WWII that they supposedly “won.”

It certainly is not my intention to exonerate England or to apologize for the Zionists. The British acted according to what they perceived as their national interest and—as I will try to demonstrate later—were as fair to the “Arabs” as could realistically be expected; as for the Zionists, they used every “legal” or illegal means at their disposal to realize their dreams, knowing full well this would be at the expense of the natives. No, my purpose in writing this post is to indict the Arabs (or rather their self-appointed representatives), their political immaturity, and their infantile ideology.

The once imposing Ottoman Empire was agonizing by the beginning of the twentieth century. From without, hungry European powers were disputing the leftovers of its vast territory when WWI erupted in 1914; from within, aš-Šarīf Ḥysayn of Mecca raised the banner of the Great Arab Revolution that was to revive the glory of early Islam while Egypt declared its independence from Constantinople under British auspices. As everyone knows, the Sublime Porte cast its lot with the Central Powers and lost, whereas the Hashemites of Hejaz bet on the Allies and won, or so they fancied.

Ḥysayn negotiated what many Arab historians described as an agreement with Great Britain to grant the Arabs their independence in a territory that extended from the Taurus Mountains in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to Iraq in the east; that was in exchange for the Arabs supporting the British campaign against Turkey with their guerrillas—themselves armed with British weapons and financed by British money. The details of this understanding were elaborated in the infamous Ḥysayn-McMahon Correspondence that spanned the interval between July 1915 and January 1916.

The contents of those letters are public knowledge, and I will not dwell on them. Suffice it to say that the British did not promise a whole lot no matter what Ḥysayn thought, and understandably so. England, which sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its young men and a tremendous treasure to defeat Germany and its allies, understood the proposed “independent” Arab kingdom as a client state to be stirred in the right direction by British “advisers.” Moreover, their vague promises were made to the Hashemites of Mecca, not to the “Arabs” whatever that term means. I would also argue that, after all was said and done, the British were fabulously generous with the Hashemites: they created a kingdom for Fayṣal—recently expelled from Syria by the French—in Iraq and concocted a realm for his brother Abdullah in a Transjordan forbidden to would-be Jewish immigrants. Ḥysayn would likely have kept the Hejaz fief to his family—his son Ali—had he been more realistic. Instead, he kept grumbling and whining until the frustrated British decided to abandon him to his fate at the hands of Ibn Sʿūd and his ʾIẖwān. In other words, the British were prepared to grant three kingdoms to the Hashemites and were perhaps justified in thinking that the territory claimed by Ḥysayn was vast enough to satisfy the appetite of many vassals and buy out quite a few enemies.

For in reality Šarīf Ḥysayn was asking the British to grant him a vast empire that they conquered on his behalf. Let there be no mistake about it: the Ottomans defeat was achieved by the British and only the British. Not only were Ḥysayn’ guerillas little more than British mercenaries, but also the entire “Great Arab Revolution,” as T. E. Lawrence would put it, was a “side show of a side show.” WWI was fought and decided in Europe, and the Ottoman Empire would have been terminated with or without Ḥysayn’s contribution. Had he and his apologists possessed a healthy dose of common sense, they would have realized that empires are conquered, not given.

Contrast Arabs’ attitude with that of the Zionists. Chaim Weizmann worked tirelessly towards preparing the conditions that would eventually lead to the creation of a Jewish state. He accepted a relatively modest territory and did not insist on a state right from the start. To him, a vague promise of a “Jewish National Home in Palestine” was adequate to begin with, it being implied that more could be demanded in due time. Indeed, there was no reason back in 1917 to conclude that a Jewish state was inevitable.

In summary, England deliberately issued vague promises to Arab and Jew, and its politicians went out of their way in wording their documents as to leave ample room for maneuver for their successors. While it is true that the Balfour Declaration gave a “legal” basis for the Zionist enterprise, it remains undeniable that Israel became a reality in 1948 mainly thanks to the commitment of wealthy European and American Jews financing the—mainly Eastern European—Jewish settlement in Palestine and providing the settlers with arms and ammunition to conquer the land at the expense of its inhabitants. Contrary to the Hashemites, the Zionists relied first and foremost on themselves.

Heroes and villains are the stuff out of which movies are made, comic books are illustrated, and tales are told. In real life we have winners and losers/ If you win, all is or would be forgiven in time. If you lose, you accept the crumbs the victor might leave you out of the goodness of his heart or hold your peace. Many losers did not even survive to relate their ordeal.

The White Man's Burden

Years ago, I came across a curious narrative concerning the conquest of Egypt by ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, completed by the end of 642 CE. Muslim chroniclers have from time immemorial glorified what undoubtedly was an impressive military achievement and a seminal event in the epical history of Egypt. According to Muslim tradition, the conquered peoples of Egypt and Syria—the overwhelming majority of whom were Christians—welcomed their Muslim brethren from Arabia with open arms as deliverers from the Byzantine yoke and went out of their way to collaborate with them against their Roman oppressors.

There certainly is a kernel of truth in this account, and this goes a long way in explaining the ease with which Muḥammad’s followers were able to defeat the vast and—in theory—mighty Eastern Roman Empire. I stress “in theory,” for Byzantium at the time was a mere shadow of its former self; it barely survived a protracted and ruinous conflict with Sassanid Persia, and its people were engaged in an endless and bloody civil strife concerning the nature of Christ: did Jesus have a divine nature? Human nature? or both? The Incarnation Controversy preoccupied legions of theologians and was slowly but surely tearing the Byzantine Empire asunder. For the sake of brevity, suffice it to say that Egypt’s Christians followed the Monophysite Doctrine, which maintained that Jesus had one single divine nature as opposed to the Chalcedonian creed that insisted that Jesus had two natures, one divine and the other human; the latter doctrine was promoted by Constantinople to the exclusion of others.

Relieved to see the back of the Romans, the Copts lost no time in dispatching a delegation to the victor. They congratulated ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ on his great exploit, professed allegiance to the rising Arab Empire, and proceeded to explain to the conqueror the irreconcilable differences between them and Byzantium. They mourned the persecution they had to endure for adhering to their faith. Perhaps they also harbored the hope that ʿAmr would exact revenge against their erstwhile foes on their behalf.

Unfortunately for them, ʿAmr understood next to nothing about their esoteric disputes. He was a brilliant general and an astute politician, but a theologian he was not. His practical mind could not fathom the nuanced and convoluted arguments about the nature of Christ. Worse still, he expressed not the least interest in the subject. He laconically replied that since they all were Christians, they all were subject to the poll tax (ǧizīā), and no retaliation would be tolerated. The rest is history, or at least the victor's version of it.

It would be too simplistic to attribute cynical motives to ʿAmr or many other great conquerors for that matter. It is indeed quite likely that he and his fellow desert warriors genuinely believed that they were “liberating” the Copts from Byzantine occupation, the same way Saʿd ibn abi Waqqāṣ “freed” Sassanid Iraq from Persian tyranny. Most humans love to attribute lofty, even altruistic motives to their deeds, and many manage to convince themselves at some level of the truthfulness of those motives. I see no reason to doubt the good intentions of Napoléon or that Tamerlane considered himself a devout Muslim, though everyone knows that those two men perpetrated or at least played a dominant role in wholesale slaughters.

Fast forward to the year 1920, when General Henri Gouraud marched on Damascus, deposed King Fayṣal, and inaugurated the French Mandate of Syria. British arms “liberated” Syria from Ottoman rule in 1918, and now came the French to “civilize” a then barbarous Syria. The “Liberating Mission” of Great Britain begat the “Civilizing Mission” of France, or, as the French would put it, “la Mission Civilisatrice.” Enfranchising and civilizing the backward peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America were sacrosanct goals in the best tradition of “the White Man’s Burden.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, the French managed to commit quite a few atrocities during their relatively brief stay in Syria—a little more than 25 years—but the Mandate was more than a brutal occupation by a ruthless colonial power. Along with soldiers and high commissioners came educators, missionaries, scientists, archeologists, financiers, and administrators. True, many of these came pursuing a career, but quite few truly believed that they had the best interests of the natives at heart.

The Mandate was doomed to fail, however, and for numerous reasons, both internal and external. The French discovered that there was no peaceful way to keep Syria, and they were too weakened by WWII to impose their will by crude force. Had they tried to do so, the price in blood and treasure would have been unacceptable. The year 1946 witnessed the last French soldiers leaving Syria; for most Syrians it was a day to celebrate, but for the French it was a mere episode in a long series of retreats that would culminate in evacuating Algeria in the early 1960s following a bloodbath that disillusioned all but the most fanatic believers in “civilizing missions.”

Decades would pass before the West, led by a rising transatlantic empire, recovered its appetite for “liberating” and civilizing.” I no longer can keep track of how many countries were “liberated” within the last 25 years: Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq, Libya… To name but a few. Syria is the most recent candidate for “liberation,” a process that started in 2011 and is still underway today.

Just to be clear about where I stand and what I believe in, the vast majority of Syria’s would-be “liberators” are acting according to their own geopolitical calculations and with utter disregard to Syria’s best interests. To add to the confusion, those “benefactors” represent numerous nations with different goals and varying methods of achieving those goals.

That those nations would pursue their perceived interests is not surprising in the least. What I find hard to digest is the ease with which many Syrians have put their trust in outsiders. It would be tedious to analyze the motives of each and every actor separately, and I don’t even believe that I qualify for such a complex task. I will therefore choose one actor, unquestionably the major actor, without whom the Syrian scene would have been drastically different as I type those sentences: the American Union, or its government, to be precise.

Not all those who advocate “liberating” Syria are cynics, though there is no dearth of hypocrisy. I have no doubt in my mind that some American statesmen would love to help Syria and Syrians, and perhaps they—like many warriors throughout history—really believe that the best way to do it would be through some military intervention that may include bombing the hapless country into “freedom and democracy,” whatever those terms mean.

 My questions to those Syrians who would entrust outsiders (the USA) with their fate are:

1. Regardless of what American politicians state and what their media repeat, do you really think that Syria is a priority for the USA? One has to separate rhetoric from fact. Americans have many issues to worry about that are far more important to them than anything that might or might not happen in Syria: jobs, healthcare, education, retirement benefits, and so on. This is totally understandable.

2. Do you know that millions of Americans can’t locate Syria on a map if their life depended on it? Do you know that millions of Americans (perhaps most Americans) can’t tell the difference between Arab and Muslim, let alone between a Sunni and an Alawite?

3. Suppose America does indeed “liberate” Syria. How long would it take for Syria to vanish from US news like magic, the way Libya did after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi? Heck, the Kardashians’ exploits are a much higher priority for many Americans than anything happening or that might happen in the Near East.


Syria is imploding before our eyes while some Syrians busy themselves imploring foreigners to “liberate” them. They seem to be anticipating a Messiah or a Mahdi, but I am afraid they’ll be waiting for a very long time.